Excerpt from Dog Boy by Eva Hornung, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He could smell the puppies now, warm and spicy-milky, sucking, sucking. He could smell her too, stinky and comforting.

He didn't move except for an involuntary shivering. She growled on but didn't move either. This growl was for him. But it was a mind your manners growl, not a get out of my sight growl and he waited, minding his manners. Then she stopped and began licking her puppies. She reached over and cleaned his face too. Her tongue was warm and wet, sweet and sour. He licked his lips and tasted her spit and the faint taste of milk. He wormed his cold hand towards her belly and grabbed a puppy. It writhed, grunting in displeasure as he pulled. It took two hands, but in the end he managed to yank it off the teat. The puppy squealed and snuggled, nudged deep and found another. Romochka wriggled himself close, buried his cold nose in the mother dog's hair and sticky skin, and then the hot milk was his. It slid, rich and delicious, down his throat and into his aching belly.

His anxiety floated away and wellbeing seeped through him. After a while his hands warmed up and he reached for her damp belly and stroked her with his fingers as he drank, feeling out her scabs and scars and playing his fingers along her smooth ribs. She sighed and laid down her head.

Excerpted from Dog Boy by Eva Hornung. Copyright 2010 by Eva Hornung. Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.